When Michel Chenelle teaches U.S. history, she points out the light and dark faces of President Richard Milhous Nixon.

There's Nixon the diplomat, who had famously opened the door to China. And there's Nixon of Watergate, who had infamously resigned in disgrace.

"He's known for Watergate and China," said Chenelle, who teaches eighth-grade history at Chime Institute in the San Fernando Valley community of Woodland Hills. "He opened up relations with China. (But) the Watergate scandal really left people disillusioned."

On Wednesday, on what would have been his 100th birthday, the nation's 37th president and Southern California's native son is both reviled and revered - and increasingly held up for acclaim.

Then there are the lingering popular images of Nixon.

Think of Nixon and picture the bulldog anti-communist with the bushy brows, ski-jump nose and stubborn 5 o'clock shadow.

Think of Nixon and remember the commander in chief who shook hands with Mao Zedong and who presided over a withdrawal from an unpopular war in Vietnam.

Then think of the man known as Tricky Dick and recall the political spying and "dirty tricks." The White House "plumbers" who broke into Democratic headquarters at Watergate. The profane White House tapes. And the "Deep Throat" revelations by the press.

Nixon, a seemingly paranoid figure implicated in a protracted political cover-up, resigned from office in 1974, ahead of near-certain impeachment. In all, the convictions of 48 government officials resulted from the Watergate affair. Today, tack on the suffix "gate" and affix a euphemism for scandal.

"Nixon was like a character out of Shakespeare, or the Bible," said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College who teaches a course on Nixon. "With enormous strengths and virtues. And enormous vices and weaknesses.

"Ironically, in some ways, Nixon was the most liked president between Roosevelt and Obama."

To mark the centennial of the president's birth, the Richard Nixon Foundation is hosting a VIP gala tonight in Washington, with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Nixon daughters Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the largest gathering of friends and family in 40 years.

Last Sunday at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, loyal supporters laid a White House wreath from President Barack Obama. A Nixon centennial exhibit is being prepared for February.

For in hindsight, many say, the late 20th century belongs to the Age of Nixon - a fiscally conservative Republican moderate who left a progressive legacy on his nation.

In the aftermath of the first Earth Day, Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Natural Resources, pushed for the Clean Air Act, signed the Endangered Species Act, and created more national parks than any other president.

In the wake of national civil rights legislation, Nixon was the first president to broadly desegregate schools in the South. He also instituted the first federal equal opportunity hiring for blacks. And returned more federal land than ever to Native American tribes.

Nixon was the first president to propose legislation for universal health care and launched the so-called War on Cancer.

He was also the only Republican president ever to support the Equal Rights Amendment for women. He also hired more women in his administration to date and launched more federal initiatives for women's rights.

He was also the last GOP president ever to field a balanced budget.

"When I think of the legacy of Nixon, I think of substantial - and complicated," said Lawrence Becker, a political scientist at Cal State Northridge and an expert on the U.S. presidency. "No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you have strong feelings about the Nixon presidency."

By now, most have heard the story about the whiz kid born of Quaker parents a century ago today in the clapboard farmhouse his father, Frank, built out of a kit in the middle of a large lemon grove.

It was so cold, his mother, Hannah, elected to bear her fifth at her Yorba Linda home rather than risk driving to a hospital.

After his father's farm failed, the family moved to Whittier, where Frank ran a grocery store and gas station.

The young Nixon woke up at 4 o'clock each morning to buy produce for the store in downtown Los Angeles, 36 miles away, then get back and clean it in time for school.

He was a staunch anti-communist, a crack debater and earnest athlete who would ultimately be accepted at Harvard. Instead, he attended Whittier College, where he ran for senior class president, promising to bring dancing to the Quaker campus. He won. And the Quakers danced.

To this day, there are campus markers for the Orthogonian Society he founded after being snubbed by a men's society on campus composed of more prominent families. He graduated second in his class.

"As far as the college goes, he's the identifiable graduate," said Joe Dmohowski, librarian for Whittier College for nearly 30 years. "I'm proud of it.

"I think Nixon is a very important historical figure. ... You'll find more fans of Nixon here than anywhere in the world except China."

It was Nixon who, after earning a law degree at Duke, returned to Whittier to be a small-town lawyer and marry Patricia Ryan. After serving as a naval officer in World War II, they returned to Los Angeles County.

A fervent anti-communist, Nixon was the McCarthy before Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Tugged by politics, the GOP candidate defeated a Democratic congressman by implying he'd been a communist. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he investigated the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, then went on to serve as a California senator.

In 1952, he was nominated to be Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's vice presidential running mate. Accused of illegal use of campaign funds, he delivered his famous Checkers speech, a half-hour defense before a TV audience of 60 million.

He said every dime had been honestly earned.

"Pat doesn't have a mink coat," Nixon said. "But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat."

He then went on to say that the only campaign gift was a family cocker spaniel named Checkers.

The comeback speech, however, contrasts starkly with one he made a decade later after he lost a challenge to California Gov. Pat Brown. Blaming the media for his loss, he said: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

It was earlier, in 1960, that Nixon lost the presidency by a whisker to the Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John F. Kennedy. In their famous TV debates, Kennedy came off as a young prince behind the camera. Nixon, recovering from the flu, came off as the sweaty man behind the 5 o'clock shadow.

When polled later, TV watchers thought Kennedy won, while radio listeners gave the debate to Nixon.

"It was awful," said Toni Plume, 61, of Tarzana, who as a girl had watched the debate with her family in their Los Angeles home, with the only TV on the block. "It was embarrassing - a train wreck."

It was at a solemn ceremony at the Nixon Library that the Cold War president, first elected in 1968, was celebrated as anything but.

A keen internationalist, Nixon had ended the contentious war in Vietnam. Opened the door to China and its future prosperity. Signed the first strategic arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union, sowing the seeds for its demise.

And despite the bigoted language against Jews heard on the Nixon tapes, he'd helped save Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

After he resigned the presidency, he became an elder statesman for numerous administrations on both sides of the political aisle.

"I never understood how a man who had so much to lose, could lose it," said Joann Wysocki, 75, of Wilmington, among 1,800 fans to show up before noon to the ceremonies at the Nixon Library. "He did good - he made a mistake - but he did good. He was a man of humble birth who rose to the heights."

Nearby was Nixon's black marble headstone, where he has rested since 1994. After his funeral, residents waited four hours to read the words Nixon said himself at his first Inaugural Address: "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

Chenelle, as an eighth-grade girl in San Diego, had once campaigned for Sen. George McGovern against Nixon's re-election, and once hung a giant anti-Nixon poster on her wall.

She hated him then, the registered Libertarian said. But she respects him more now.

"He's still not one of my favorite presidents," she said. "But I appreciate his political acumen. He was a great politician. He was a real go-getter."

Richard Nixon says goodbye with a victorious salute to his staff members outside the White House as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974. Nixon was the first president in American history to resign the nation's highest office. His resignation came after approval of an impeachment article against him by the House Judiciary Committee for withholding evidence from Congress. He stepped down as the 37th president with a 2,026-day term, urging Americans to rally behind Gerald R. Ford. President Ford fully pardoned Nixon one month later. (AP Photo)